Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

.photography beating .camera

Kevin Murphy, February 10, 2014, 17:25:49 (UTC), Domain Registries

Who said shorter domains are more popular?
Donuts’ new .photography and .camera gTLDs, which both come out of their Early Access Period premium pricing phases this week, have seen .photography get more than twice as many registrations so far.
During their EAP and sunrise periods, where retail prices can range from $150 to $13,000, .camera has racked up 146 names to .photography’s 383.
There’s a difference of meaning here of course, which is reflected in the types of domains being registered; .camera names tend to be hardware-related, while .photography is heavy with personal names.
Donuts’ strategy of picking strings that already feature heavily at the end of the second level of .com seems to be reflecting the reality of registration patterns in new gTLDs too.
The photography-related gTLD space is going to an interesting one to watch.
We’re also waiting for the launch of .photo and .photos (.photos in two weeks, .photo in April), which will crowd the space further. These two are also likely to be the first plural/singular competitors.


If you find this post or this blog useful or interestjng, please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.

Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Comments (10)

  1. Acro says:

    Photography is an interesting beast.
    While photographers are proud of their assets and skills, they are also ‘tight wads’ who will spend a fortune on new gear, but very little on domain names.
    Keep that in mind before you go registering such domains with the intent to resell.

  2. One’s is a product, the other is a profession and hobby
    I’m not surprised by the results

  3. Jim Saul says:

    Absolutely… when someone is looking to hire a photographer for an event, what are they going to enter in the search engine?
    I just checked to see if wedding.photographer is available. 😉
    And checking that just now made me realize something about the gtld issue that I hadn’t before… autocomplete made the length of the tld moot – it completed to .photographer as soon as I hit the “p”, with .photos as the next choice.
    That makes me wonder when was the last time I typed in an entire URL without just grabbing it on autocomplete, or going from a bookmark.
    While I assume that .com is going to be the default standard for a long time, these descriptive marks as tlds might not take as long as I thought to come into common usage.

    • blehblehbleh says:

      Where did it autocomplete? I doubt in your browser. Anyway I’d consider this a detriment considering there are many ccTLDs starting with “p”.

      • Jim Saul says:

        Yes – address box in Chrome on a windows machine.
        I just tested it again – actually autocomplete was on the h – wedding.ph…
        It doesn’t mean much.
        However, autocomplete is hardly an unusual technology.

  4. Shane says:

    Not apples to apples. As Michael says, different beasts. If you want to compare a shorter it would be photography and photo and I’m pretty sure which one would win.

  5. Dan says:

    As someone with a significant vested interest in this space – I own the likes of SportsPhotography.com, NaturePhotography.com, ContemporaryPhotography.com etc….the multitude of domains that could be applicable to some degree to the broader genre is probably more than most. Pics, Pix, Photo, Photos, Photographs, Photography etc. For me, whilst brevity is indeed usually better, Photography conveys greater authority and is the broader genre. I’ve found it to be a very positive aspect of the names, and certainly haven’t ever wished for the shorter derivatives. It is both a subject and a skill. Given I had no interest in the dot.photography gTLD, I’m looking forward to the additional traffic boost all of the .com’s will receive!

    • Jim Saul says:

      Those are some great names – I immediately hit NaturePhotography.com to see something less dreary and grey than what’s outside the window right now.
      Interesting beginnings of a platform there. As a photographer I’ll check back in the coming months.

  6. Bert says:

    These tlds are a waste of cyberspace.
    No one is ever going to go there.

Add Your Comment